Cons:

For a fantasy role-playing game, Fable II's world isn't too far removed from our own. People in the fictional setting of Albion are motivated by sex and money, by love of family and by the desire to find a sense of purpose. Fable II is a beautiful, interactive morality play wherein you'll make difficult choices, like whether to exact vengeance on a murderous criminal, or to turn the other cheek. You'll potentially learn more about your personal beliefs system through your actions. Fable II is an ambitious second effort that far exceeds what was accomplished in the original Fable, delivering breathtaking graphics, an engrossing story and refined gameplay.

Welcome to Albion

One of the recurring themes of Fable II is that your choices affect everything around you, from the way people perceive you, to your personal appearance, and even to the world itself. The world of Fable II is as much a character as the protagonist, as the impact made by your adventures over the course of the game will reshape it in your image. From the very first hour to the last, you'll find opportunities to make choices that will drastically change Albion and yourself forever.

Albion offers sights and sounds that aren't to be missed. Its lush outdoor environments are a technical feat, overloading your senses with color and natural movement, from the gently swaying fields of flowers you'll trample through in search of treasure to the serenity found in going for a swim in a moonlit lake.

The environments are decently large, though there aren't very many of them. Still, every chunk of space you get a chance to explore is filled with minute detail, from ruined chunks of stone from a past civilization to small freshwater ponds that you can playfully splash through on your way to bigger and better things. You'll see a lot of the same visual theme throughout the game, though, and this is even joked at by one of the characters you encounter, who opines that this particular bandit camp has the best sharpened pointy logs of them all.

The fauna of this world range from bunny rabbits happily bounding along to balverines, furry humanoid nasties that assault travelers with their vicious claws. Hobbes are your typical goblins, though in Albion they're smart enough to make use of firearms, magic, and even mechanical stilt devices that are surely their way of overcompensating for a height disadvantage. The more dangerous enemies include earth creatures called Trolls, whose massive, craggy forms are invulnerable to your attacks, requiring you to carefully remove their life-giving tendril growths when they're exposed. They reminded us of the trolls from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, enormously strong chunks of earth with a predilection for lobbing boulders at anyone that looks at them funny.